Star Wars Dooku: Jedi Lost by Cavan Scott

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I first heard of Dooku: Jedi Lost, I was intrigued. This was an audiobook, done by a full cast of actors and apparently not available as a physical book. I was curious if there were any more publications like these, but apparently Dooku: Jedi Lost is the first among its kind. After some consideration I bought the audiobook through the Google Play Store, so I could listen to the book while driving to and from work.

The audiobook is a good six and a half hours long, so it didn’t take long for me to finish listening. It was my first (Star Wars) audiobook and after finishing it, I find that I have mixed feelings about it. Mostly because the story just wasn’t that good, but also because not all of the voice-acting was good too.

The book is about Dooku and how he fell to the Dark Side and became Count of Serenno. We follow him as a youngling in the Jedi Temple and how he eventually ended up becoming the padawan of Grandmaster Yoda. Although Yoda’s voice was done perfectly, his dialogue feels cliche and contrived. Stuff like “Meditate on this, I will.” and “In the Force, we trust.” are repeated dozens of times, making me wonder if that’s all the writer feels Yoda should say. I sure think he has a lot more depth than that, especially since Yoda is one of the most powerful Force users in Star Wars.

As the book progresses we get glimpses of Dooku’s past through holorecordings that his apprentice Asajj Ventress is studying. I found that all of the parts with her were superb and really caught my attention. Asajj is among one of my favourite characters from the Clone Wars era, but I always found Count Dooku an interesting person as well.

By the end of the book it felt like the writer didn’t have much of an idea how to finish big, literally. It just didn’t really feel right to me, but I don’t want to spoil anything to the readers of this review. But it was already pretty obvious that Dooku was a masterful Force user, so why not just make him become the Count of Serenno through cunning and power? It felt odd and dissatisfactory to me.

Some of the parts I liked best where when Dooku had Qui-Gon Jinn as his apprentice. I love Qui-Gon, so seeing him in this story was cool, especially because he was much younger here, but already defiant and rebellious towards the Jedi Order.

Overall my first experience with audiobooks has been a bit of a mixed bag. I loved the full cast and sound effects, which really add to the experience, but the quality of the story left a bit to be desired. I have heard good things about Star Wars audiobooks, so I might just try one more, hopefully it wil be a better experience.

Happy reading!

-Jeffrey

Final score:

Cover art: 🌟🌟🌟
Voices: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Plot: 🌟🌟🌟
Originality: 🌟🌟

Overall: 🌟🌟🌟

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